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Congress mandates new car technology to stop drunken driving (2021)
- hammock 3y agoOP article is from 2021 and is news this week because the House recently voted(1) to reaffirm the mandate that automakers include equipment in all vehicles by 2026 to detect driver impairment and automatically disable vehicles when it is detected (1)https://thefederalist.com/2023/11/08/house-republicans-help-dems-preserve-kill-switch-mandate-that-could-shut-down-your-car/ https://thefederalist.com/2023/11/08/house-republicans-help-...
- pvg 3y agoIf it's news, why isn't it in the news with a reasonable source? Most proposed regulation is OT-ish on HN and most proposed regulation takes a lot longer to turn into reality than originally scheduled.
- hammock 3y agoOne might leave the answer for why the only articles covering this regulation in mainstream sources are fact checking misinterpretations of the law (as opposed to a headline with what the law actually says) as a worthwhile exercise for the reader
- pvg 3y agoPosting an old news article without year to slide in your unpostable URL is just lame, not any kind of exercise for the reader.
- josephcsible 3y agoThis is terrible. All such systems will have false positives. It's wrong to treat everyone as a criminal instead of reserving such systems for people who actually have been convicted of it.
- RC_ITR 3y agoI'm sympathetic to this point of view, but then we have to be consistent with it. No TSA. No license plate scanners. No fare gates for trains. No locks on doors. No anti-shoplifting tags. EDIT: Is there some Emerson convention in town? You can look at my comments for some of his other quotes (It's actually not very surprising to me that an Anglo abolitionist who also believed that Anglos were the 'best' race wasn't a big fan of consistency!)
- josephcsible 3y agoThe difference is that you own your car, but not those other things. Things you own should always do what you want, not try to enforce laws against you.
- RC_ITR 3y agoI was under the impression that 99.9% of people take their cars out on publicly owned roads when they drive. Am I mistaken?
- josephcsible 3y agoBut this would go in the cars, not in the roads, so that's irrelevant.
- RC_ITR 3y agoWell it wouldn't preclude your use of the car (you can still enter it and turn it on), you just can't drive it on public roads (Essentially the entire use-case of moving a vehicle). TSA is at the airport lobby and technically only precludes me from entering the airside of an airport, but its purpose is to prevent me from getting on a plane with a gun. I don't think point of implementation is a strong argument here.
- hammock 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- superkuh 3y agoIt is already illegal to drive on public roads or third party property while intoxicated. Drunk driving interlocks which you have to blow in are pretty much the only way this could possibly be implemented. But https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/23/business/drunk-driving-interlock-crash.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/23/business/drunk-driving-in... "The Unforeseen Dangers of a Device That Curbs Drunken Driving".
- buzer 3y agoIn some states merely sitting on driver's seat with no intention to drive while intoxicated can lead to DUI charges. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgOekbY8Sqs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgOekbY8Sqs
- Ancapistani 3y agoSitting in a lawn chair next to the car with the keys in your pocket can count. You have "effective control" over the vehicle.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- acbullen 3y agoI am doubtful that unless a car is fully autonomous anyway having the car try to pull itself over against driver input will be that much safer. I can see many iterations causing accidents by suddenly slowing down or merging into another vehicle or parking on blind corners. Plus I imagine the 'drunk' driver would then leave the immobile vehicle, opening a host of pedestrian on road risks
- adrr 3y agoThis is going to be so awesome when I can't drive my car because I just used hand sanitizer. Or won't let me drive because i just cleaned the windows with window cleaner. Solution is cars that drive themselves.
- superkuh 3y agoSo people who live in Minnesota just don't get to use cars for 4 months of the year? Autonomous vehicles cannot handle snow covered roads with emergently defined flocking based lanes and road edges. There's a reason the vast majority of autonomous vehicle testing is done in the arid southwest of the USA.
- csharpminor 3y agoIf you read the article, it speculates that the most likely mechanism will be IR cameras that detect distracted driving/sleep. This technology is already widely used in commercial truck driving.
- pauldenton 3y agoI knew there was telescreens in every workplace and home in 1984, but Cameras in every vehicle observing the drivers action perpetually is something even Orwell couldn't come up with
- hash872 3y agoI've already driven a rental car that warned me when my eyes were narrowing slightly? Is this just me? This was I think a few years ago now
- izzydata 3y agoI am really dreading the day my current car from 2015 that has no fancy tech features fails beyond repair and I have to get a new car. I will first attempt to get an older car with low mileage, but old cars won't last forever.
- jollyllama 3y ago>old cars won't last forever. The Cubans would like a word
- not_the_fda 3y agoThe Cubans don't have to deal with snow and ice that requires a corrosive brine on the roads.
- tastyfreeze 3y agoTheir corrosive brine is natural and all year. Maritime environments are hell on cars.
- someotherperson 3y ago> old cars won't last forever Depends how old. Older cars have better survivability than newer ones, almost exclusively due to the simplicity[0] of the design and parts. If you want a car that can last forever (with maintenance and from an odysseus ship perspective) then an old car with a diesel engine and manual transmission is the way to go. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxSNT1bmEQY&t=75s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxSNT1bmEQY&t=75s
- cj 3y agoTechnically old cars can last forever if you simply keep repairing and replacing parts. Got an engine with 200k miles on it? Swap it with a new one! Obviously it’s not easy and can be very expensive (and many mechanics will look at you weird if asking them to do $20k of maintenance on a 20 year old car, but they won’t say no!)
- Simulacra 3y agoI think this is a horrible idea, and I really hope someone like EFF files a lawsuit against it. If the government can simply turn off your car whenever it feels like it, what else could they turn off that they don't want you to use? How about an off switch for your bank account for "unsafe" purchases? Turn off your internet for speech the government wishes to censor?
- windowshopping 3y agoThis website is unviewable on mobile, I don't know about desktop.
- pkulak 3y agoIs it a train?
- Banyonite 3y agoCould the system that disables a vehicle when impairment is detected also be triggered remotely in vehicles that are always "connected"? If so, under what circumstances could this take place?
- tqwhite 3y agoIt would be much better, and more effective, to have police everywhere so you could ask their permission. Or, this would work, prohibit cars so nobody would ever die. Stupidest law ever.
- tqwhite 3y agoAlso, I picture a person fleeing an abusive partner having their car decide it's better to pull over and let them be killed.
- scohesc 3y agoThe laws are already in place to convince (most) people against impaired driving. The threat of losing your license and being fined is already there. Increase the punishment along with naming and shaming the criminals publicly. Imprison second time offenders as they clearly have a drinking or substance problem that needs treatment and they can't be trusted to operate motor vehicles. This is just a slow creep towards total governmental and manufacturer control of vehicles under the guise of ~safety~. I hope I can still buy offline vehicles for a bargain well into my life but with society and the law pushing people towards electric vehicles, I feel like that window is slowly closing because electric vehicles are even more guilty of this. I hope the government will force these companies to release the algorithms used to determine whether someone is driving impaired so the public and other auto companies can work together to improve reliability of systems and also help up-and-coming automakers to implement these systems without another expensive barrier to entry to get past. But they won't - and we'll be stuck with sub-par programming that doesn't account for edge cases, dirty sensors, broken cameras, electrical problems, and requiring expensive first-party repairs at your "authorized (st)ealership" whenever a part of the system has a slight problem. Owning things is getting more and more expensive - no need to tack on more governmentally forced features that would really only prevent the die-hard drinkers and drug users from driving when they should be locked up in the first place.
- throwaway4aday 3y agoCan't wait for the inevitable cases of people in extremis trying to drive themselves to a hospital from far out in the country dying on the roadside because their car decided that their driving was erratic or their behavior inside the car was unusual.